Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Life's a Beach

I'm back !! I really did have some posts planned so I apologize for being MIA lately.

Life surprised us with an early spring break present. Patrick was called to a job in Ventura, California. It is about 2 hours from our home and right on the coast. The job was only supposed to be a day long job, but stretched out over 4 days !!

On Saturday we went and stayed with Patrick at the hotel. Right on the water, great balcony view of the beach, playground on the beach right nearby. Although the beach was really rocky and no sand at that spot.

View for the balcony

We spent the next morning poolside, with a great view of the HUGE waves that were forming that morning.

Spent a little time at the playground before we had a Noah related breakdown that ended our stay at the beach. Lunch was in order.

We decided that we wanted to upgrade hotels and booked an awesome room at the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Resort. WOW !! Is all I have to say about that hotel. More to come on that. Before we could check in at our new hotel we had a few hours to kill. I found this wonderful HUGE park right next to our new hotel, thanks to my iphone (LOVE my phone).

The kids played for a few hours on the playground, which just happened to be pirate themed. The kids are huge into pirates right now. They also had a treat from the Ice Cream man, which they never get to do at home !! He always comes around but I never have cash on me. So they were super excited.

Patrick was done for the day and met us at the park so we could check into the hotel. Our room was the closest one to the water and had a HUGE balcony with a great view of the ocean. We will be staying there again for sure.

Our view from the balcony.

After we got settled in to our room we walked down the stairs and onto the beach. The weather was a little coldish for my taste. And the first day it was SUPER windy. But that didn't stop us. When the kids first saw the sand hills right outside our room there were filled with joyful laughter as they ran towards the sand. They parked themselves right there on the first available sand spot and it took about 15 minutes and a lot of coaxing to get them to move towards the water. They were so excited.

They played in the sand

Checked out the waves

Day 2 at the beach

Much warmer and not so windy. The kids played on the sand dunes some more. They hardly stood still long enough for me to get any good shots of them. Oh well.

Playing their little game of tag with the waves. Getting ready to run.

Maddie was so funny on the beach. She was always doing this hilarious happy dance of sorts. It was so cute to watch.

We made it a habit of swimming in the pool every morning. Noah would sit on the steps of the pool and then he would come and sit with me on the pool chairs. He loved to play Angry birds on my phone while the girls swam.

The girls have not yet had swim lessons (I'm looking into lessons right now) and so they like to use their life jackets so that they can swim by themselves. Katelyn loves to jump in the pool. She calls her jumps, her tricks. She is always yelling for me to watch !!

The last day we were there (yesterday) I wanted to visit another park that I had heard of from my phone. It was a wonderful find. They had a sunken ship, with a zip line. A playground and it was right on the water.

The weather was great yesterday. It wasn't windy and it was a little bit warmer that before. The kids got in the water again.

The girls jumping over the waves

We were all wet after playing in the water again, Noah finally decided to get in the water and no more than 30 seconds later he went too far into the water and a huge wave came and knocked him over !! He was wet from head to toe. That was our cue to be done for the day.

So by this time in our trip none of us had any remotely clean clothes. I had originally only packed clothes for a 1 nighter. And the hotels laundry room was not in service !! We headed back to car all wet to find something clean. In the end the kids ended up in their jammies for the drive home. It wouldn't have been so bad but we had to stop for dinner and boy were we a sight !! The hair was all of a mess, pj's on the kids (it was about 4:30 when we ate), and red faces to boot. Oh well. We ended our trip at one of the local fruit stands to pick up a box of strawberries, oranges, grapefruit, and avocados. All of which were grown on the side of the road of where we were at !! YUMM !!

That concludes our beach trip everyone. If you are still with me, Thank you. I know it was a long post. We really had a great time.

Now it is time to play catch up. Laundry, un-pack, and I still want to try to do some of the things that we had planned to do for Spring Break.

Have a great rest of your Spring Break everyone, if it is your spring break.

Where I get my inspiration

My chicks

About Me

Hi. My name is Mindi and I am the mother hen to three little chicks. I love to take photographs, maybe too many. Because the other chicks who live with me think I'm a little camera crazy !! I also love to scrapbook and to be creative. A little bit, or maybe a lot, every day ! I hope you enjoy your stay and come back often.